


The Rehabilitation of Ava Bekker

by lesbianettes



Series: Slowly, Slowly [1]
Category: Chicago Med
Genre: Ava lives AU, Baking, Cows, F/F, F/M, Fluff, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rhekker is only in the context that Ava has/had an obsession with him and is healing from that, Running Away, Smoking, farm stuff, farms, instead of herself she killed connor and ran away to a farm
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-12-20
Packaged: 2021-01-02 21:15:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 15,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21167990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbianettes/pseuds/lesbianettes
Summary: Instead of killing herself, Ava Bekker panicked. She panicked, and, now that Connor is dead, she has no choice but to go somewhere else and start over.





	1. Chapter 1

Ava panicked.

There was too much that happened, and she had just wanted to be loved. It was that simple. She wanted someone to hold her, and tell her she was good, and make her feel like she was loved. Connor had been the easy choice, the one standing beside her at every turn, smiling at her. He told her that her surgeries were perfect. She had wanted him to stay, wanted him to be everything to her and vice versa. Everything she did, Ava did out of love.

Except for that last part, which was done out of panic. She asked him for an hour to get to the airport and he said no. He was blocking the exit. And Ava didn’t know what could possibly come next for her, so she did the only thing that came to mind and put the scalpel in her hand to use.

There was a lot of blood. On her. On the floor. Mostly on Connor. She ran for it then, and made it all the way home. She gave herself five minutes to wash the blood. Ten to pack and get the cash she saved under her bed in case of emergency because, really, once she killed Connor’s father, she knew deep down that she’d need an escape plan. 

She took a cab to the airport, bought eight tickets with her spare cash, and grabbed the one no one would ever think to see her on. Sicily, Paris, Cairo, Mexico City. Albany, Boise, San Antonio, Minneapolis. Enough places that no one would know where to look, and the plane she got onto was headed straight to the midwest. Minneapolis is a big enough city to get lost in, and an easy starting point to get to the middle of nowhere.

Now she’s here, on an ugly blue seat that’s rough against her legs, squished between a matronly woman knitting with knobbly brown yarn and a man that smells like fish and has decided that her leg room is his. To say the least, it’s unpleasant. But at least she’s not in cuffs, she thinks. Connor with his arms crossed, that disgusted look on his face, watching her dragged away. That would be the worst part.

It hasn’t hit her yet, what she’s done. After showering, her body is clean, for the most part, and she even clipped her nails to get rid of the caked red beneath them. She can see, in her mind’s eye, how he collapsed with his hand on his neck, blood splattering out of him and hitting her hands, her scrubs, her face. She left behind evidence at home, she realizes. But it’s not home anymore, and it doesn’t matter because no one will be able to find her after this. She’s planning on disappearing.

_ Hi,  _ she thinks to herself.  _ My name is Avery Rhodes. I’m twenty eight. I moved from South Africa with my parents when I graduated high school, and then studied art for a few years. I worked at a Denny’s because my art degree was worthless. Nothing worked out, so I came out here to try farming. No, I’m not married. No, I don’t have a special someone. Yes, I can pay rent, at least for the next few months. _

Ava tightens her hands on her backpack. After the plane tickets, she still has about twenty grand in cash. Enough for a used truck and gas to get somewhere far from the city, and then start new as a farmhand for someone with little internet access and a warm bed she can sleep in. She’s being idealistic, if she’s honest with herself, but it’s this imagined plan that keeps her from hyperventilating or bursting into tears. The running away, she’s thought of all this, but killing Connor wasn’t part of the plan. She didn’t want to kill him. She didn’t mean to. It just kind of happened, and now she can’t take it back. And Connor, he’ll never hold her through the night and tell her he loves her again. She’s completely alone, even squished in the middle seat of a cheap airline with her carryon rattling overhead.

Outside the window, which is half-lidded to protect against sun, the city has given way to green pastures and neat bricks divided by crops. The darker ones are soybeans, she thinks, and when she lands she’ll probably find out for sure. There are plenty of big company farms out here with background checks and files and worse, but there are also little family owned ones out there, especially some that might be hiring. She can figure this out, she tells herself. One way or another.

There’s another hour or so left for this flight, and Ava tries to distract herself with the sky magazine. A high powered blender, an inflatable pillow. She stares at the pictures, but doesn’t process them. Her body is humming, almost, with leftover adrenaline from what she’s done. Deep down, at the bottom of her backpack, is a picture she couldn’t leave behind, one she had printed out a few weeks ago. Her and Connor, happy and smiling. His arms were around her and they had kissed just before that picture was taken. She wants to look at that, but it’s too risky right now.

Beside her, the old woman keeps knitting. The fish man keeps hitting her knee with his. The plane keeps roaring and Ava, surrounded by people, feels so completely alone that it burns.

She doesn’t know what to do with herself, in a situation like this. There are no surgeries to prep for or consults to host. Connor isn’t a few steps away for her to talk to and look at and thinking about him hurts right now with the weight of what she’s done. Later it’ll sink in, she thinks, watching her twitchy hands on the edges of the magazine. They’ve always been so steady. They had to be, when she was a surgeon. The slightest twitch, the slightest misstep, and she could commit irreparable harm. Ava prides herself on being steady. But right now, she shakes. Because she was steady when her scalpel found home not too long ago.

When the plane finally begins its descent, she hasn’t been able to still her angry muscles. Everything’s too much, including the buzz of the other passengers quietly talking. She’d like to be in a quiet OR, able to focus because she’s always been good at that. Real things, like standing in line with her luggage while people bump shoulders with her, aren’t as simple or doable. 

She might start screaming, as she shuffles past a starbucks-that-isn’t-a-starbucks and wonders where she can buy a prepaid cell like in all the movies. Not the sort of movies Ava usually watches on her own, but one’s she’s seen at Connor’s side and remembered. There’s probably one in the big mall just a cab ride away. The twin cities have one of those, huge. There’s supposedly even a theme park inside. But that’s not what Ava is here for. She steps outside and hails a cab to the mall, a plan clear in her mind.

Step one, get a prepaid phone.

Step two, use it and free coffee shop wifi to look for a job ad.

Step three, buy a used car and go to the job.

It seems simple like that, and helps her keep from stumbling over her own feet when a cab pulls up and asks where she’s headed. She’s got the money to do this and, before she knows it, she’ll be safe and away, and she can reach into her bag and pull out the picture of Connor and her. He’s with her. She’s okay. All she has to do is keep going.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :3

Roads in the middle of nowhere aren’t as nice as those paved in Chicago. The pickup truck Ava bought, old and growling, clatters along the dirt road with a cloud behind her and the radio picking up little other than static. It’s quiet out here. Just her and endless fields, no other cars and no other people. She doesn’t have much with her, either. The things she brought from home, a burner, and a fresh suitcase of new clothes for working on the farm. Wellies and overalls, soft shirts that are lightweight and comfortable. She even got sunscreen. She’s prepared, but it doesn’t feel that way with the sun slowly bleaching the picture on the dashboard until she notices and drops it in the cupholder.

She was right when she thought no one would find her here. Hell, there isn’t anyone else here to see her. The truck’s motor is her only friend, and it makes a valiant coughing noise when her tire sinks into a divot, but at least it keeps going. She just has to keep going. Her phone burns through the prepaid data as a GPS, so she turns it off for a while because it’ll apparently be a few more hours on this single road before reaching the farm she’s found herself a job. The woman who owns it, Robin, was polite in her emails and promised companionship and a shortcut into town on the weekends. She pictures Robin now, for lack of a better thing to do.

In her mind, Robin is an old woman with thinning silver hair whose husband has passed and kids have moved away. She’s left with her crops and her roosters, as well as a big farmhouse that seems empty without a family. She’s matronly and makes breakfast in the mornings once Ava gets the eggs from the hens. On hot days, she makes lemonade and swats flies, tells stories with the windows all open, since the old farmhouse doesn’t have air conditioning. Her hand sewn dresses will flap in the wind and she’ll admit, she doesn’t have the same way about the crops as her husband did, God rest his soul. She probably has a bible too, one she reads in the morning light and evening dusk, pages edged in gold leaf, her kitten heels tucked up next to her armchair.

That’s what she imagines, but if it’s real, Ava thinks she’d hate Robin and the farm house, and wind up running away somewhere else where no one will find her and she’ll be saddled with boredom and exhaustion and frustration. Being a surgeon was one of the only things that ever kept her attention. 

She slams her hands on the truck’s steering wheel, prompting it to sputter and slow, even though she’s fine on gas. It’s giving up on her too, apparently. Just like Connor gave up on her. So Ava hits it again, but this time with her forehead, and it hurts but at least seems to appease the truck. She hates this car. It has terrible mileage and it’s cramped and the air conditioning is broken so she’s sweating down her back. But it was what they had that wouldn’t attract too much attention.

For as long as she’s been driving today, she’s surprised she hasn’t had some sort of mental break. She has a history of doing poorly when left alone with her thoughts for extended periods of time. Maybe the thing that’s different is knowing this will never end. This loneliness is permanent because of her panic, because of what she did. No one will hold her again. No one will love her. She lifts one hand to her lips, feels them, still soft with the chapstick she applied religiously in hopes of making every kiss better for Connor. He’s dead and gone, and still, she can’t let go of Connor. She’s still thinking about him.

What did he do to her, she wonders, that she is so beyond captivated by him even now that he’s gone? She can’t think of a single thing he’s done that differentiates him from those in times’ past who she’s fooled around with. By all accounts, there was nothing different about him. Nothing special. Maybe it was how ordinary he was that made everything special, including the way he held her at night with his lips to her neck. She reaches one hand up to glance against the column of her throat where he used to touch her. It doesn’t feel the same.

Hot sun glares through the windshield at her, as scorching as the way he had felt when he was with her. Now, in spite of her body overheating, she is cold. Her lungs are full of ice. Her veins are near frozen. She can barely breathe. Her hands are clammy on the wheel, gripping it too tightly while she goes down the same straight and narrow road. 

Everything is green, on all sides of her. The tops are a bit yellow on some fields, proof of the corn season beginning to draw near an end in the early fall heat. Dry husks will soon litter the ground like at the harvest festival Natalie took her son to last year. It had felt cozy and real. Ava would love to have a child and husband to bring to things like that. Pumpkin carving and candy apples and peaceful love between intertwined individuals.

She goes and goes, until she reaches a fork in the road and pulls off to the side to reactivate her GPS. Left. And then it’s only about forty minutes until she reaches Robin’s Farm. That’s its name. Robin, she thinks again, will make life a little easier. She’ll settle in and have a nice dinner, get plenty of rest and start in the morning. There will be peace here. 

The rest of the ride, Ava leases her mind to mull over every memory she has of Connor, except for the one where his eyes glazed over and his skin became bloody. If she thinks of it, she can still feel it. She can still inhale copper and his cologne.

The drive-in has a wooden sign whose paint has faded along the edges, reading “Robin’s Farm” in white over a soft blue background. And up the way comes the first surprise.

Robin’s farm house is not old fashioned or falling apart. It’s modern-looking, with the exterior painted pale green and the trim dark brown. Sticking out a couple windows are AC units humming only a little softer than her engine, and a couple of goats milling about the property come to greet her. 

Once she cuts her truck and slips out, a woman comes meandering out from behind the house. She’s not a little old woman who needs help running the farm now that her family is all gone. In fact, Robin is about Ava’s age, with smooth brown skin and her hair braided down her back, tied in a ribbon. Maroon and yellow- a strange color combination- plaid stick out of her worn overalls, sleeves rolled up to her elbows. And her overalls are tucked into muddy boots up to her knees. She doesn’t look anything like Ava imagined, but her smile is still kind and bright when she sticks out a hand. 

“Robin Charles. You must be Avery.”

Ava doesn’t know why, but as she shakes Robin’s calloused palm, she says, “You can call me Ava.”

“Ava,” Robin repeats, and rolls her shoulders. “You can go get changed in the house, and I’ll show you the ropes.”

It’s quick. Ava nods, though, and grabs her suitcase from the truck bed. She has something like what Robin’s wearing in there, and drags her case through the house until she finds a bathroom to change in. Her hair’s in a ponytail, which she hopes is good enough, as she pulls on a tee shirt and high rise jeans with her own pristine wellies. For a split second, she feels guilty about messing them up. But that’s what they’re for. 

She packs back up and returns outside, where the sun immediately assaults her face and Robin is stroking the head of one of the goats. She looks up with a smile when Ava returns and straightens up. 

“I’ll show you the coop, follow me.”


	3. Chapter 3

Within a couple hours, Robin has shown Ava everything necessary. She’s seen the chickens and how to take their eggs. She’s met the cats and dogs. She’s gone to the long building full of smelly pigs and learned how to feed them. She’s been showed how to pick corn and shuck it. She’s found the hose for watering things. She’s explored the shed. Starting today, she’s in charge of digging the holes to plant rows of apple saplings. It’s a bit wet up here for apples, but Robin wants to start an orchard, and apples are the first step. Robin lent her gloves to protect her hands from the rough handle of the shovel because, honestly, Ava’s hands are not made for this work. They’re soft and slender, the hands of precision and art. Not grunt work. But she digs, careful and measured, until the hole is the right depth to pull a sapling out of its pot and place it.

Kneeling in the soil, she’s as intensely focused as she was at her old job on giving this little apple tree its place in the earth. Ava places it meticulously, repacks the dirt carefully around it and gives her a sense of accomplishment. This sapling has a chance. But there are still dozens more whose holes she must dig and roots must be spread. It’ll take forever.

This is what she gets for separating herself from Connor. She had tried so hard to help him understand her and love her like she loved him. Now this is some sort of purgatory, where she’s safe at last but the farthest thing from loved, and nowhere near any kind of peace. Out here, it’s just her and Robin, who has taken up residence making bread tainted with the flavorful spoils of the little garden by the porch. Ripe red tomatoes, fresh rosemary, and plants Ava can’t identify grow in their small patch and, from them, Robin sustains herself. Now that patch will sustain Ava, too. 

She’s glad for the trucker hat purchased at the mall, bearing the emblem of a lady’s silhouette, to keep the sun off her face, but it does little for her neck and arms. She’s frying in the sun, and she’s certain her palms have blistered with the work of the shovel after only digging one hole. There’s so many more to go.

Wiping the sweat off her forehead with the back of her hand, she presses on to the scent of sourdough and other things rising out the kitchen window. It’s a couple hundred feet away, and open to allow hot air to aid in proofing. For this purpose, Robin’s turned off the AC unit downstairs which, combined with the heat, will make the house less than pleasant when Ava comes in after her work is done.

She initially arrived just after lunch, calling to attention how hungry she is. She had dinner at the motel last night, and coffee and a danish for breakfast this morning. But she didn’t have lunch, and she also didn’t think to buy a water bottle. Some combination of the two is giving her a nasty headache to compete with every pain in the rest of her body.

It wouldn’t be difficult to pop inside for a glass of water and a snack. She doesn’t think it would make Robin upset. But it would be an admission of a mistake, and Ava’s so new that she worries the misstep will have her sent off in her truck again, perhaps without anywhere to go this time around. It’ll be just her and her picture of Connor again. 

Would that really be so bad?

As she breaks ground on the next hole, she wonders how long it’ll take the apple trees to begin blossoming. And how soon after that they’ll provide fresh apples to explode tart in her mouth. Maybe she and Robin can make pie, cooling on the windowsill while cats wind around their feet and concoct plans to get to the dessert.

Ava’s always kind of wanted a cat.

She digs the shovel into the ground and steps on it for good measure, scooping as much dirt as she can in each round so she won’t have to do as many. Already her boots are caked with dirt, no longer clean, and she can picture tracking the particles inside and having to sweep after herself. The farmhouse is clean, she knows, and the dirt would be so obvious. She doesn’t like dirt. But it layers over her at the moment, and cleaning it off at the moment is useless.

Digging and digging, as the sky slowly goes from its crisp blue to an ugly yellow like straw, no clouds and no perfect angle to give it a beautiful color worth staring at. By the sun’s last call, she’s only managed a handful of trees, she’s exhausted, achy and hungry, and she doesn’t know if she’s meant to keep working until she accomplishes the task. Her deep breath fills her with more than just the allure of bread, but of chicken and onions and other things that turn sharp in the back of her throat and make her mouth water. She wants to eat. Is any of the food for her?

As she’s thinking, she hears Robin’s voice ripping through the still air. “You can finish that tomorrow, come eat!”

Ava’s beyond relieved and has to make a conscious effort not to just drop the shovel as opposed to leaning it up against the side of the house. She takes her boots off at the door, leaving them next to Robin’s. The house is cool again. Refreshing. She finds her way to the kitchen where the small table is already set for two. Across from Robin’s seat must be Ava’s, with a tall glass of water and a pitcher in front of it. A barrier between her and the meal. Chicken breast seasoned and laid out, veggies sliced into sandwich size, and clearly home-baked buns. Sandwiches. It’s something Connor had hated, insistent that he didn’t want bread and chicken in the same bite. If he were here, he’d eat everything separately and tease her light-heartedly for her choices.

“I didn’t see you with a water bottle, so you’re probably dehydrated. You should drink.”

Ava nods and, with the first sip of water, realizes Robin is right. Her throat was dry, and the water feels like a soothing balm applied over every inch of the inside of her body. Her arms are pink, her hands pale, when she reaches for a bun before realizing she should wash her hands. They’re gross. She’s gross. A shower is definitely in order.

“Do you not have sunscreen?” Robin asks, and it’s a jest bordering on the affectionate tone Ava misses so badly. “You got a little burned.”

“I forgot to apply.”

She sits back down and serves herself. The first bite is so much better than anything she had in Chicago. It must be because of how fresh it is. Unpreserved, unprocessed. It is real, real like the chasm in her chest and the photo of Connor still hidden away. After they eat, she’ll probably bring her things inside and put them in whatever room Robin allows her. 

Robin takes the pitcher and refills her own glass. Fingerprints are left behind on the plastic as she eats her own meal. “I have an aloe plant upstairs, I’ll get you some to help with the burn.”

“Thanks.”

“Sure.”

Once Ava finishes her first sandwich, she’s still hungry and wishes she could have more. As she imagines it wistfully, staring at her plate, Robin nudges the buns toward her. “You know, you can have as much as you want.”

As much as she wants is a dangerous permission, but this time, it doesn’t feel like it. It feels kind, as Ava happily fixes herself another sandwich and buries herself in its taste.


	4. Chapter 4

After dinner, Ava helps wash up, and Robin tells her where she can find her room and a shower upstairs. After that, she’ll get a dose of aloe to soothe her sunburns, and then… and then. She’ll be free until dawn cracks open her skull and sends her back to work digging homes for the trees. The evening is hers. 

The bathroom is neat and well kept, bath towels in the closet and a bar of soap on the counter. There aren’t shower items, but that’s alright because Ava thought to bring those for herself- including a cheap set of washcloths to scrub the dirt off her skin. She turns on the water and her brain, ever helpful, reminds her of the way the clear spray turned pink while it took her sins away and threw them down the drain. The dirt is like that, only it’s more of a pale golden-brown as opposed to the blood tone. It’s just as hard to scrub from under her short nails and out of her hair.

If Connor were here, he’d help her clean up. He’d tell her she did a good job, planting these trees. And she would feel loved. So loved. She shuts her eyes and trails her hands over her own body, imagining they belong to someone else. Fingertips on her waist, between her legs. She brings herself no pleasure, but he would. And he’d be smirking as he did it. He liked to tease. That particular memory burns too harshly and she moves on to pressing her fingers against her lips. It’s not like a kiss. She aches. And then, the water begins to cool down, so she hurries to finish and pull on pajamas. Cloth shorts and a big tee shirt, boxers because that’s the sort of girl she’s now got to be. 

Her feet are quiet on the hardwood as she towels off her short hair, but Robin is loud in the kitchen. Not loud, exactly, but the only noise in the house carries. It’s louder than the sounds outside of the pleating goats and the feisty chickens and the wind blowing through the stalks of corn. Ava peers around the staircase to the kitchen, where Robin has cut open a thick green leaf and started squeezing the gel inside into a bowl. She knew this is where aloe comes from, but it’s different to see it as Robin uses a fork to mix and soften it thoroughly.

“Thank you,” she says.

Robin smiles as she brings the bowl over. “No problem. Just wear sunscreen tomorrow, okay?”

She nods, about to reach for the gel. Before she can, Robin scoops some into her palm and takes one of Ava’s sunburnt arms. Tenderly, she massages it into the heated skin. Such a gentle touch, even though her palms are rough with labor. It’s like love, but it isn’t the same as other kinds. Ava doesn’t feel it in her head, she feels it in ever place Robin touches her, and she doesn’t know what to make of it. Part of her wants to pull away. Another part wants to pretend it’s Connor taking good care of her. She can’t remember the last time he did that. Now he won’t ever take care of anyone again.

“Penny for your thoughts?” 

Shrugging, Ava looks away from Robin’s face and out the window. The sun has set, and there are too many stars outside. More than she’s ever seen, and some that move in huddled swarms until she realizes they’re lightning bugs. It’s a skyline, so separate from Chicago, but like home to her in a way that allows her shoulders to sag and her chest to expand with fresh air that smells like the rubbery scent of aloe.

“I think you’re running from something,” Robin muses. She moves onto the other arm and soothes it with the gel. “You suddenly respond to my ad, move out here. Never done work like this in your life.” She cups Ava’s palm and feels the uncalloused pads of her fingers. “What are you running from?”

Her immediate urge is to lash out, argue, yell, defend herself. But all of that feels out of place, and so, instead, she says, “It’s hard to talk about.” 

That’s the truth. It’s really difficult to talk about Connor and Ava isn’t ready to share the good or the bad memories yet. Especially not with someone she’s just met, however kind and insightful Robin is. However fast her heart begins to beat when Robin moves onto the back of her neck and cups it so lovingly as she massages in more cream. The sunburn doesn’t hurt as bad anymore. Ava doesn’t hurt as bad. But inside is much less repaired than outside, and she turns away when Robin withdraws.

She isn’t into women, and love isn’t like this. Love is all consuming. It burns and it screams and it scars. It’s gaping wounds in her stomach and her head spinning. Love is pain, and this doesn’t hurt. Love comes soon, she knows, because it came so soon with Connor, but not on the first day anyhow. This is coping, Ava decides. She’s coping with losing Connor by latching onto Robin’s touch. Before long, she’ll settle. And maybe eventually come to fully recognize deep down that Connor is dead and not coming back.

While logically she knows that, knows it to be a fact, it has yet to sink in. Just like it hasn’t sunk in that she’s given up her old life and can never return to it, no matter how badly she wants to. That part of her life is over. She’s different. She breathes new air, fresh air, and the way she feels like she’s being ripped to pieces is completely different but persistent nonetheless.

“I’m always here to listen,” Robin says, and pulls away from Ava. She misses the touch. At the same time, she’s glad it’s over. “I’m turning in for the night, so I’ll see you in the morning. This’ll be in the fridge if you need it.”

True to her word, Robin puts the aloe in her fridge and heads upstairs, presumably to the room she said was hers when she gave Ava a mini tour. The hallway stretches between them, impossibly far but so close. Ava has only slept in such short distance when there was someone beside her. A warm body so close but so far. She waits a few long minutes before going up to her own room, shutting the door behind her and turning down the downey comforter on the bed. It’s hand embroidered, a bit like her imagination provided, in patterns of heathers and lavender and other delicate things, its batting making it plush and soft.

She drags her backpack up against the nightstand, which glows the room with its little bedside lamp, and digs into it for what she needs the most. Her photo of her and Connor. It’s comforting in her hands, cold against her lips when she kisses the mimicry of his face. His body must feel like that now, too, and she’s glad her last kiss with the real him was one where he held her close and made her feel worthy. 

“I miss you,” she breathes, and sets the photo on the table so she doesn’t crush it in her restless sleep. This is her only copy, and she can’t afford to destroy it and lose the last image she has of his face. His adoration. If he were here, he’d kiss her and turn off the light for her. She touches her own lips again. When was the last time Connor told her he loved her? The last time anyone told her they loved her?

She pretends it was before she ran away. He understood that everything she did, she had done for him, for them, and he told her he loved her. She imagines him telling her to run here and promising to meet up as soon as he’s able. 

Everything she did, she did out of love. It can’t be wrong if it came from love. Never. 

“Goodnight Connor.”

She turns off the light and burrows under the blankets like they’ll shield her from reality.


	5. Chapter 5

Nightmares are something Ava grew out of before puberty. She grew up, stopped picturing bogeymen and fear, and became a doctor whose real life’s work was worse than almost anything her mind could come up with. Being a surgeon desensitized her. Every doctor is like that, after a while. Unphased by blood, bone, organs. It’s hard to practice medicine if you faint at the red stuff. So really, she forgot every coping skill that she ever really learned for dealing with dreams so real and so terrifying that they leave her shaken for days. 

She isn’t at all prepared for what sleep brings her, that first night in Robins’s home. Maybe an hour or two after she falls asleep, her traitorous brain assaults her with a recount of her last days in Chicago. First it’s the insulin injection, so careful not to be caught and with her mind full of dreams of Connor’s reaction. With his father gone, everything would be okay, and he would love her again. That’s all she wanted from him. And the dreams of his father, she can handle with ease. She doesn’t regret killing the old bastard any more than she regrets nights spent in between the sheets with Connor’s arm over her waist protectively.

But that isn’t all her mind conjures. No, it goes through a speedrun of the time that followed, and then she’s back in that OR with Connor. It’s different this time. She reaches for him and he doesn’t flinch, leans into her hand against his scruffy jaw. The beard looks good on him. Suits his face. Makes him look more like the capable and confident surgeon he is, less like a child playing dress-up with his puppy dog eyes. He’s hers again, even touches her face in return with the intimacy she missed so dearly. 

“Connor,” she sighs, and he pulls away from her. She doesn’t know why, doesn’t know how. But suddenly her hand has the scalpel and his throat is split open in an angry red grin. She can see his body, parts of him that aren’t supposed to touch air, and he chokes as he collapses. Bloody hands grabbing at her coat, staining it beyond repair. White can be bleached, but never fully restored. She panics, just like the first time, and drops down to try and help him, but there’s too much blood loss too quickly, and she can’t call for help. “Connor,” she says again, and when she turns to run away, he’s still suffocating on blood and starting to seize on the floor. He’s not going to get back up. There will be no recovery. 

As she leaves, she keeps her head down and ignores everyone who tries to talk to her. There’s no plan in her head. Because it loops, and she’s back in the OR with a scalpel in her hand and this time, Connor cries. He looks at her weapon and cries, begs her not to do this. Still, she does it anyway, through no decision of her own. His throat cut. Blood. On his knees. Pulling her coat.

Cut.

Scream.

Sob.

Blood.

Cut.

Over and over the same moment plays, and each time feels like her heart being physically ripped out of her chest but she just can’t make it stop. This is hell. Losing him over and over. Sometimes he cries. Sometimes he screams. Every time he dies, and she keeps killing him over and over and over until it hurts to see his face because she knows what’s coming.

It’s the ten or maybe the hundredth time she kills him that she wakes up to a loud thud. 

Ava cries out as she sits upright, shaking and sweating and already crying by the time she realizes what woke her. Her bedroom door was flung open, hitting the wall- which made the responsible noise- by Robin, who stands silhouetted in the doorway with a baseball bat over her shoulder.

“Jesus, Ava are you okay?”

She can’t get a word out. All that emerges from her mouth is a sob, and then Robin sits beside her and holds her. She holds like Ava might break, but also like she’s holding every little piece of her together. The bat sits on the duvet innocuously now, like Robin wasn’t ready to destroy anything that could have been hurting Ava with it a few moments ago. Its wood is likely cold, unlike Robin’s bare legs pressing against Ava’s because they’re both in pajamas. Robin in considerably less. 

“Nightmare?” Robin guesses.

This time, Ava manages a nod, and the arms around her turn to a hand rubbing soothing circles on her back and another stroking her hair. God, but it’s comforting. To be held again, cared for again, twice as intimate as the way Robin helped her earlier. The cavern in her chest closes just a little, but it still reaches bloody and angry for anything left in her empty soul. 

Connor’s dead. Permanently. Because of her.

She looks down at her shaking hands and they’re clean, but if she squints she can still see his blood on them. She didn’t mean to kill him. Didn’t want to kill him. She needs another shower because she’s soaked through her pajamas and she swears she can still feel the blood on her skin.

If Robin knew, she could very well kick Ava out. Or worse, call the police. She doesn't want to go to prison. But before she can get too deep down that rabbit hole, Robin starts to pull away. It shouldn't be a big deal, but somehow she can't handle the idea of spending the rest of the night completely by herself, accompanied only by her memories of Connor's body. Ava grabs onto Robin’s arm.

“Can- can you stay?”

She has no right to ask, especially not when it comes to wanting this, but she can’t help it. Ava’s lonely, and she’ll take what she can get in lieu of what she really craves. Robin is the next best thing, and she kisses Ava’s hand as she lays down beside her. She stays. The bat on the floor, her legs under the covers and touching Ava’s like everything is alright. Connor always slept in sweatpants, no shirt. Robin’s the opposite. Cheeksters and a big tee shirt, comfortable and beautiful without arrogance. 

As Ava settles into the bed again, Robin’s arm drapes over her waist. “This okay?” she says softly, breath tickling the back of Ava’s neck. She didn’t realize she was so close.

“Yeah.”

With her eyes shut, she can almost pretend that it’s someone else holding her, but there are too many distinct differences for her to really ignore. Robin’s hand is smaller, splayed across Ava’s stomach. Her heart beats slower against Ava’s back. Her legs aren’t as long. She still makes Ava feel safe, though, and falls asleep without hesitation. She had been willing to do whatever necessary to protect someone she just met, had a bat in her hand because she heard Ava having a nightmare. Maybe, Ava feels even safer than the nights between losing Connor the first time and the second. 

She can’t get back to sleep as easily, but her heart stops beating out of her chest and her tears dry up on her cheeks. Her body is exhausted with the work she put every muscle into. But her mind, it spins at a thousand miles for hour with her dream still at the forefront of every thought. In real life, he hadn’t screamed or cried or done anything except collapse and start dying at her feet. Dream Connor was worse. He wasn’t real, but he got to her, and now she’s hearing the sounds of him suffocating loud and clear in the empty room. 

Connor’s father had had the decency to die quietly. She doesn’t have nightmares about him. 

The night goes slow, and at some point she must fall asleep, because she wakes up to light through the curtains and Robin stirring against her back. It’s a lazy wakeup, with both of them starting to stretch and separate as one of the cats arrives to knead Ava’s legs. 

“That’s Butterscotch,” Robin says. Breath hot on Ava’s skin. “She’s a sweetheart.”

“Hi, Butterscotch.”

Ava reaches to pet her soft fur and steel herself for the day.


	6. Chapter 6

The bread Robin made yesterday looks beautiful when she pulls it out of the fridge to make breakfast. It’s a warm orange-red, laced with dark green herbs, sliced thick and hearty with soft crust. Ava moves alongside her. She hasn’t had breakfast before, but she thinks she’s smart enough to figure out the basics. There are four eggs in the fridge, the exact number Robin said to set aside when they collected them yesterday, and she pulls out each one to set beside the stovetop, already heating the underside of a skillet.

“How do you like your eggs?” Ava asks.

“Scrambled.”

Ava dives back into the fridge for milk, and hunts down a bowl to crack the eggs and dash milk into before whisking them to uniform pale yellow like the nurse station’s countertops. They sizzle in the pan, cook quickly while she fumbles for a spatula. She’s made scrambled eggs a lot of times, but not recently. Connor liked them over easy. But this is Robin, she reminds herself, and keeps stirring as Robin toasts the bread and cuts up a few strawberries fresh from the patch outside. Everything is fragrant and Ava’s mouth waters, even though she’s never really been one for breakfast, perhaps as a result of how hard she pushed herself yesterday. It’s easy to want, and she’s allowed to have it as she serves eggs onto two plates populated by fruit and bread and love.

“I’ll try and finish the trees today,” Ava says, bringing her own plate to the small table, the strawberries running a path of juice toward her toast like it’s a race. “Then I’ll get to harvesting the peach trees, I know you said you wanted to make jam.”

“I’d rather you milk Nina first,” Robin says. “She’s fussy if you wait all day, and I want her to get used to you while I check the roost.”

Nina is the name of one of three cows currently under the care of Robin’s farm. Nina’s mother, Angie, spends most days lying in the shade and drinking water, while Nina’s calf Isaac is always happy to bounce around the pasture. In a couple more months, he’ll be off to another farm as a bull for breeding, and Robin had said that she worries how Nina will react, same as she worries that it’ll be painful the day Angie passes or needs to be put down. Put down like a racing dog on its last leg, like Connor on the OR floor. She doesn’t want to hear the sound. She doesn’t want to think about him. But her memory abuses its power to surround her in it. Ava just barely resists the urge to clap her hands over her ears and scream until it goes away.

“No problem.”

The toast is sweet and savory, warm and hearty in her mouth like more of a meal than just a piece of bread baked the night before. Paired with the eggs, it fills her up more than she’s used to this early in the morning. In a good way, though. By the time she clears her plate, strawberries included, she’s pleasantly full and ready to milk Nina. Robin gave her a basic demonstration yesterday, so she has an idea, but she’s never done this on her own before. It should be fine. She’s pretty sure it should be fine.

“Oh, and you ought to drive into town today,” Robin adds. “Get yourself a big water bottle to carry with you while you work. Passing out from dehydration or heat stroke isn’t all that fun.”

“Yeah, I’ll do that after I take care of Nina.”

Robin gives her a thumbs up and takes both their plates to the sink, leaving Ava to pull on her boots and get the clean buckets off the drying rack. Full, they’re about ten pounds each. That’ll mean Ava builds up some muscle while she’s here, which isn’t the worst thing that could possibly happen to her. She’d look good with muscle, she thinks. Be strong enough to protect herself.

She carries the buckets off to the pasture, where true to form, the cows are up and alive. Nina swishes her tail lazily against flies like buzzards, protecting both herself and Isaac. Angie is just fine on her own in the shade. Her eyes are soft and warm, welcoming, and Ava’s drawn to the idea of sitting under the tree with her and stroking her rough fur while the world carries on past them. But she’s here for Nina.

“Hey,” she says softly on her approach, the two buckets dangling beside her legs. “Morning, Nina.”

Nina eyes her warily. She shifts on her hooves. Yet, when Ava kneels in the damp grass, wetness seeping through to her knees, she stays still. Ava lays a flat palm against her flank. She can feel each breath. Nina is here, and unafraid, and doesn’t finch or move when Ava positions the first bucket and starts milking her. The sensation of milking a cow is… strange, she’ll be honest. It’s warm and squishy and the sound of the milk on the metal pail is weird. But she’s doing  _ something _ with herself, and Nina trusts her to do this without believing Ava will hurt her. Ava doesn’t want to hurt people. She doesn’t try to hurt people. She just wants to be loved, and Nina loves her in less than a day. At least, she has to, if she’s so calm at being milked.

“Good girl,” she praises as the first pail fills, and she moves onto the second. Isaac doesn’t live off it anymore, but Robin’s been strict about milking her every morning and most nights in order to keep her producing. Fresh farm milk is better, she had told Ava. Ava hasn’t sampled Nina’s milk and isn’t sure she’d like to, although come to think of it, this must be the milk she put in their eggs this morning. “Good girl.”

The second pail fills just as quickly, and they’re painfully heavy as Ava carries them back to the house to be properly bottled and chilled. She’s sweating more carrying them than she did actually milking Nina, and feels like she needs a shower already. She won’t take one. There’s too much else to be done, not including needing to drive into town and buy herself a water bottle so she doesn’t get dehydrated or something. It’s an obvious purchase she should have thought of before she even got here.

It’s another simple, easy task she can accomplish without too much thought. Drive into town. Buy a water bottle. Come back. And then she’ll likely be back to planting trees, filling in the beginnings of an orchard. An orchard would be nice to have around. She sees the appeal. They can sell it along with the eggs and corn that Robin already makes a decent living off of in the city once a week. There’s town, where basics can be acquired, and the city, where business happens and there’s enough people and cameras that Ava’s nervous about going to help Robin with the stand. It may be a duty of hers, she realizes. She won’t know until the weekend comes. 

But town, town she can handle, and she brings Connor’s photo with her as well as her wallet. She doesn’t know why, but it feels like abandonment to just leave her last memory of him at home. Crackling radio, shitty AC, they keep her company on the forty-five minute drive to the store, even though she speeds for most of the time. It makes her feel alive.

Everyone in town knows each other, she realizes almost immediately. The grocer and the customers chat, call each other by name with ease. People greet each other on the street. The bike by the liquor store doesn’t have a lock on it. They’re trusting and close, so everything about her will scream outsider, that she knows the second she gets out of her truck into the hot, dry air.

She leaves Connor’s photo tucked into the center console as she walks into the general store. It’s pathetically small, with little variety, compared to the splendor she had gotten used to in Chicago. Her choices for water bottles are disposable, thermos-like, or patterned with childish characters. Connor would laugh at the third option with her. She grabs a thick metal one and goes up to the front. Ten dollars, not too bad. But as she stands in line, listening to inane banter, her eyes land on what’s behind the counter. Cigarettes, in their neat rows and bright packages. She used to smoke in med school, but gave up the habit when she graduated because the cravings made her hands shake, and a surgeon needs steady hands.

Ava isn’t a surgeon anymore. She tilts her head up bravely and finds the package of her old go-to. They’re cheaper than in Chicago, and she appreciates that. And lighters are only a dollar, so she mentally adds that to the tab.

Does Robin smoke, she wonders? She doesn’t have a smoker’s voice, and Ava didn’t see her light up at all. Possibly because she’s never felt stress like Ava has. Lucky her. But now Ava has something familiar to bring with her, something to take the sting out of the bite, and she couldn’t be more relieved.

She sets her water bottle and a black lighter on the counter. “Marlboro Red, please,” she asks, and pulls bills out of her wallet.


	7. Chapter 7

On the drive back, Ava smokes three cigarettes. One after another, her left hand hanging out the driver’s side window with the butt trapped between two fingertips. As the nicotine sinks into her body, she feels like she’s breathing easier than she has since she killed Connor. And she can say that, suddenly. She killed him. But its impact, its meaning, doesn’t bother to drill itself into her mind, and she’s left with a pitiful understanding of what could be. 

She knows she’ll be making more trips into town for more cartons. She’s missed the calming effect that smoking can have on her. Something to do, something to focus on, something simple. And by the time she gets back to the farm, she feels a little less like she’s dying and a little more like a human. 

Back to the trees, once she fills up her new water bottle from the kitchen sink. It’s more lukewarm than cold already, but it’ll keep her from dying when she picks up the shovel and digs into the dirt hard. It goes faster today, the digging, because she finds a rhythm and her body is getting used to the hard work. And not being dehydrated helps. In fact, Ava even pauses to put on sunscreen. No new burns atop the old. 

By midday, she’s planted rows and the trees just need a brief watering before she can take a break. Just in time for Robin to come by, ask if she’s hungry for lunch. She is. Physical labor makes her body much more desperate for any aid. Water, food, a shower. When she’s offered a sandwich and some kettle chips, she takes it, sitting on the front porch with her thigh pressed against Robin’s. Close. The space between them stops existing.

“So, Avery Rhodes,” Robin says, a hint of a smile on her face, “Why here?”

Hearing the name she gave herself, no shortening to her real first name, her last a stinging reminder of Connor, brings fresh tears to her eyes. Fuck. She struggles to hold them back, because it will give away more than she wants or is able to say.

“I had a rough go of it in the city,” she admits carefully. “Things just didn’t work out, so I thought I would try something new.”

It’s only half-truth, but it’s good enough, and it makes Robin laugh. Her laugh is a little overwhelming in its openness. It’s a real laugh, bright and beautiful and it kind of hurts to see someone so happy. As far as Ava knows, Robin’s been alone before her, so she has no idea what would cause such genuine joy. It doesn’t seem to be newly acquired either.

“What about you? Where were you before this?”

Robin stretches her legs out in front of her and takes another bite of her PB&J. “I’m from the city, too. Chicago, actually.”

Chicago. Shit.

“Really?”

“Yeah. My uh, my dad works at a hospital there. Gaffney, I think.”

Fuck. Ava nods but doesn’t say anything because she’s afraid of what she might say, what could give it away. There’s tons of doctors at Gaffney, but that doesn’t mean that by chance, Robin’s father wouldn’t be able to identify Ava. And everyone must know what happened to Connor down there, what she did to Connor. What she did to him. Connor Rhodes is dead, and what if Robin talks to her father? Makes the connection, Ava and Rhodes and the sudden appearance with few details of her past.

“Ava, are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m just- I’m just tired,” she lies, and finishes up a bite of her sandwich. She needs to end the conversation. “I finished the trees, by the way. What’s next?”

Robin probably notices the change in subject, but at least she doesn’t bring it up. Instead, she takes a long pull from her water bottle and makes a vague gesture at the property. “By tomorrow, I should have a list of stuff that needs doing every day. Should make things a bit easier for you.”

“Good. But for the rest of today?”

Robin glances behind her at the house. “Do you know how to make bread? I’ve gotta stock up for the market.”

“If you show me- I’m a fast learner, I promise.”

“Yeah. I think I’ve still got the recipes written down somewhere too, c’mon.”

Robin stands up and they both head inside, cooler than the summer heat, depositing their dishes in the sink on the way. Eggs, flour, herbs, ingredients Ava doesn’t recognize off the top of her head are laid out on the counter, and Robin goes digging in the junk drawer until she pulls out a small spiral notebook, the cover red and the pages well worn.

“I’ve got a couple batches for kneading,” Robin says, gesturing toward two towel covered bowls on the counter a ways away. “But let’s work on this first. I did tomato basil yesterday, miche is right over there. Let’s do rosemary.”

“Sounds perfect.”

Robin pulls out measuring cups and a mixing bowl. Between the two of them, they measure the dry ingredients, and then the wet, and start making a dough. Stirring with spatula turns to getting flour-covered hands in the bowl. Kneading it, giving everything the chance to become homogeneous. And then it’s covered with a towel, and Robin brings over the other two bowls.

“Have you ever kneaded before?”

“Not really.”

“Reflour your hands and pull out the dough.” As Ava obeys, Robin sprinkles flour across the counter and grabs her own. The air smells fragrant and soft. “Just copy me.”

Robin digs the heels of her hands into the dough, pushes, and then pulls the top back toward herself to repeat. A constant motion, calm like inhaling smoke and blowing it back out of her lips. But Ava is more watching the motion of Robin’s arms than her hands. The ripple of her muscles, the way the glow of sunlight through the window highlights them in gold and shadows them in oak. Stunning.

Ava quickly draws her attention away and does as Robin. Pushing and pulling. Over and over. But it’s not quite the same, and the dough doesn’t expand like Robin’s is. She glances over again.

“Here, let me show you.”

Suddenly Robin is right up behind her, reaching around each side of Ava and putting her hands atop hers. She’s warm. She guides Ava in each motion, teaching her how to properly knead it. And it works, the dough beginning to do as it’s supposed to, but that’s not as important as the light feeling of Robin’s breath against the back of her neck. Briefly, she imagines a kiss against the tendons. The way Connor used to. Did Connor know how to make bread, she wonders? Would he be any good at it? Would he want to learn? Maybe things would have gone better if Ava had learned, and baked for him, cooked for him. She wouldn’t want to be a traditional-type housewife, but she knows a lot of people enjoy being taken care of, and Connor was no exception. Loving him was a full time job. Now it’s part time, but is just as taxing, and she’s trapped in her memories of what it felt like to be wanted by him.

“Ava?”

Robin stops guiding her movements and gently pulls at Ava’s hips, urging her to turn around so that the counter digs into the small of her back. But that doesn’t matter. Not like the hands cupping her face and wiping away tears Ava didn’t know she was crying matter. Not like Robin matters, all of a sudden.

“Are you okay.”

“Yeah, I-” Ava sniffles. “I don’t know why I’m crying.”

Probably because of Connor. It always circles back around to Connor, like everything in her life for what feels like an eternity. Nothing and no one matters like Connor does- did- does. But Robin suddenly matters, and Ava doesn’t know what she’ll do if Robin stops touching her.

“Do you want a hug?”

Ava wraps her arms around Robin’s waist and sinks into her. Her comfortable body, the smell of soil and hay on her sin. It feels nice to be held. It’s not like Connor held her. This is softer, more loving. Love, from someone she’s just met, and she craves it so much it hurts. But it also feels like betraying Connor, and she pulls away, clears her throat, and goes back to kneading bread.


	8. Chapter 8

They don’t talk about the hug. Ava makes dough, kneads it, bakes it, wraps it. Robin cooks them pork chops. Ava showers and, sitting in bed after, she holds Connor’s photo in her hands. He’s smiling. She misses when he used to smile at her. But Ava can’t quite pinpoint the last time she saw that smile, aimed at her, in person. It was long before Connor died. He hated her in the brief time between their breakup and his blood everywhere.

She sits by herself for a long time, atop the mattress, thinking about Connor and dreading the nightmares that plagued her last night bidding a painful return. If she has to hear him die again, so clear and real, she thinks she might just throw herself out the window to put herself out of her misery. The nightmares are a dark promise looming on the horizon of a shitty night’s sleep.

Instead of handling it like an adult, Ava follows the impulse to go to Robin. Last night, Robin protected her and then held her to stave off further bad dreams. And it worked, too. But going to Robin means she can’t bring her picture of Connor with her, and she doesn’t want to leave it here alone. She can’t let go. It’s only been a few days- she needs more time- but she feels like she needs to start moving on. The farm has kept her so busy that it feels as if a lifetime has already passed.

Her feet carry her down the hall to Robin’s room, where she raps on the door three times. Immediately Robin calls her in. Ava pushes the door open with ease to see Robin sitting on her bed with a book in hand, clearly having been deep in concentration before the interruption. An apology rolls to the tip of Ava’s tongue, but doesn’t spill over. 

“I was wondering if I could stay with you tonight?” she asks. It sounds stupid. “You just made me feel safe last night, and I…”

She trails off in the explanation, but Robin scoots over to the side of the bed and gestures for Ava to join her with a smile. It’s natural, at ease. Trusting. Ava crawls into bed and feels wanted with the arm that curls around her as Robin reads. Her lips move a little, tracing the words. Simple but beautiful. The rasp of the pages, the warmth of Robin’s body, start to put her at ease. She can breathe deep, she can survive, held like this.

There’s warmth and protection like this, and as she slowly falls asleep, there is no fear building bright in her chest with the intent of ruining her night. She can sleep, she will sleep, and everything is going to be just fine.

Robin is still awake when she drifts off, the light still warm and the pages still turning. But Ava is just tired enough to fall asleep and, for the first half of the night, she’s okay.

But then, but then the dreams come back again. Connor screams at her, cries, bleeds out on the floor. Tonight, his blood never stops and it fills the room, fills it until she’s treading like it’s water and struggling for the last air in the OR that smells like blood. So sticky and thick. And his body floats so it never leaves her sight, but it’s not the same body she left behind.

The Connor floating in the ocean of blood is not the one who just died moments ago, but a corpse which has begun to rot. His eyes are gone, his skin putrid. He smells worse than the blood. Maggots spill out of his mouth and Ava has a strong stomach- any surgeon has to- but it makes her sick. She might throw up. In her nightmare, she does, but it just vanishes in all the blood without regard to how awful this is.

_ “Connor, I’m sorry!” _ she screams, but it’s buried in the still rising blood until she’s trapped beneath it and she can’t even cry. 

Of course, she wakes up again, and it’s worse than last night. Robin is shaking her awake and telling her she’s okay, even though the sheets are soiled because it seems like her vomit wasn’t just a dream. Before she can even stutter out an apology, Robin’s arms are around her. Around her like she’s not covered in her own sick, and like they’ve known each other for a much longer time than just the past handful of days. It’s loving.

“It’s okay,” Robin says into the crown of Ava’s head. “It’s okay, you’re safe now. Nothing can hurt you here.”

There’s no way to explain that she’s not afraid, she’s guilty. Nothing could hurt her in Chicago either, at least not physically. This is a different sort of hurt that she simply has no tools to cope with, and no idea how to eliminate. It’s not like she’s killed before this entire thing. But God, is waking up like this even worse, with her own sick on her body and the sheets and Robin, and unable to take a deep breath or stop crying. She’s like a child again. Helpless and incapable.

Robin picks her up, still like a child, and carries her to the bathroom before setting her in the tub. “Can I help you clean up?”

She nods, and lifts her arms for her shirt to come off, shimmies out of her pajama bottoms and underwear. She feels exposed, but not for long as the hot water begins to pour and Robin fills her cupped hands before letting it fall over Ava’s head. It’s soothing and peaceful, being cared for. The washcloth is soft working over her body with a soap that smells citrusy and fresh, smells like Robin if she were to really think about it- which she absolutely doesn’t.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Yes and no. Ava wants to talk, but not about the truth. Once again, she’s forced to settle for halves, which feels like a betrayal when it comes to Robin, for some reason. Maybe it’s the kindness that washes over her with each pass of the cloth. 

“I lost someone,” she says. “In Chicago. Right before I left he… he passed. And it’s all my fault.”

Robin hums and wrings out the cloth. “I’m sure it’s not. I know it can feel that way when you’re grieving, but it’s not like you actually killed him.”

Except for the fact that she did, and Ava’s forced to wonder if Robin would still be so kind if she knew that. No, she wouldn’t. She’d become as cruel as Connor turned, and she would send for someone to lock her up permanently. In this moment, Ava reminds herself that, no matter what, Robin can never know what really happened.

“I miss him.”

“Things like that never go away. But they get better.”

Ava wants to believe her. She doesn’t get the chance to say another word before the water shuts off and Robin helps her to her feet, holding out a soft bath towel. 

“I’ll change the sheets while you get redressed. You’re still welcome to spend the night in my room.”

Maybe, Ava realizes as she goes for fresh clothes, this is what caring is supposed to feel like.


	9. Chapter 9

Over breakfast, the night behind them laid to rest like Connor must be, Ava receives her official list of daily chores, all of which she can handle. Milk the cows, tend the growing orchard, and water the crop. There’s not much land on Robin’s property, not enough to be stressed about, but enough for it to span her day. The corn and soy need plenty of water, and Ava, armed with a hose, is more than happy to handle it. Robin couldn’t afford to put in sprinkler systems, and she didn’t want to disturb the ground like that anyways. So the hose it is, washing over each tall shoot with corn nearly ready to peek out of the fibrous husk.

But first, breakfast.

Ava fries up bacon from the butcherie and Robin slices fruit, a light breakfast because she’s still a little queasy and Robin is planning on going to a friend’s farm to help out at midday. Ava will be on her own, with just the animals and her guilt. And her picture of Connor, which she can’t even bear to look at today. Not burdened as she is by the memories of her nightmare, his rotting corpse right up close to her face as she drowned in his blood.

She really didn’t mean to kill him. She keeps telling herself that.

Is it true, though?

She had the scalpel in her hand. She was angry. She was scared. And she thought about it for the split second before taking action, so of course she wanted to kill him. That’s a realization that hurts, one she buries in a bite of the best bacon she’s ever had and juicy melon that fills the kitchen with its overpowering juice. The less she thinks about it, the better.

And then Robin is getting ready to leave, pulling on her boots and getting the keys to her own truck, in much better shape than Ava’s shitty, run down used car. “I’ll be back by mid-afternoon,” she says, but that’s not what matters. What matters is Robin putting a hand on Ava’s waist and pulling her close to kiss her cheek in goodbye like it’s the most natural thing in the world. It feels natural. And when she’s alone again, Ava cups her cheek in memory of the kiss. It doesn’t mean a thing, she tells herself, but it’s branded into her mind as she goes to milk Nina again.

Angie is still laying down, and still tired. She huffs as Ava approaches, but doesn’t move. Instead, she allows herself to be pet. She soaks up the affection, just as Ava soaks up Robin’s, and Ava wonders if animals feel love the way people do.

Did Connor feel love the way Ava did?

Nina behaves for her milking. Ava tends the trees. She picks up the heavy hose and holds its coils over her shoulder as she approaches the rows of crop. Water them, water them. She had to turn on the hose back at the house, so it sprays against her boots as she walks, gets into them and soaks her socks. There’s probably a better way to do this. One she hasn’t learned yet because she’s new and has become a rookie all over again. 

She misses surgery, misses being able to fix everything and know exactly what would happen next. That had been beautiful. This is messy, and she misses knowing for certain where she stands in the world. Adding in the confusion that is Robin, she feels lost, and there are no bread crumb trails to lead her home.

This, the dirt and the corn and the dry air burning her throat, is her home now. She can’t go anywhere else.

She has this destructive urge to uproot every plant, leave them massacred in the soil and disappear again to go somewhere new with her picture of Connor and her grief, but that feels too cruel now. Robin is kind to her. Robin makes her feel like the world isn’t crashing down around her. Robin represents the love that she lives on now.

And does it hurt, yes. Yes, it’s killing her, but she would never do anything to hurt Robin or this quaint farm where she’s started to scrape out a living. Yes, she aches, but she’s here now with Robin, and it doesn’t necessarily feel like too much of a bad thing as she waters the crops. Everything is okay. She’s alright.

When she finishes with the crops, she goes back to the pasture and rests with her head on Angie’s flank. She smells like a cow. It’s not unexpected. It’s familiar, rather, and helps Ava feel a little more real as she dozes on and off in the summer heat. So what if it’s hot out, so what if it’s dirty, so what if she gets dried grass in her hair? She’s peaceful.

She gets up at the rumble of Robin getting back, and bounds up to the porch just in time to open the door. Robin’s got two baskets on her arms, one all packages in butcher paper, the other full of fresh fruit. Everything is fresh here. For once, Ava feels settled in. 

But something isn’t right. Robin won’t look her in the eyes as she puts the meat in the freezer safe for a single package, or as she heats up a pan and grabs seasonings. It doesn’t make any sense. And it hits Ava, suddenly, that this is how things went downhill with Connor. One day he became cold. She doesn’t want anything to happen to Robin, doesn’t trust herself not to do anything if this is Robin’s new face. Her recent discovery of the violence she’s capable of has made her wary, afraid. She doesn’t want to hurt anyone anymore, especially Robin.

“Is everything okay?”

“Fine,” Robin says.

Ava doesn’t believe her.

But she doesn’t push, afraid of what it could mean, and makes rounds to feed the animals while Robin cooks. Clearly, something has changed. She just doesn’t know what. It frightens her, in truth, as she pours food into the row of bowls for the cats, and then to the dog bowls. They all wander around, they eat, they bump wet noses against her legs. A little family in this home.

And how heavy is her heart as she goes for dinner, and Robin eats silently, refusing to say a word or meet Ava’s eyes. She wants to ask again. There’s no answer, no peace. What she felt this morning is now gone, replaced by ice and abandonment. Dinner tastes good, but it might as well be cardboard for the feeling Ava gets out of it. The home cooking isn’t reassuring any more.

Robin doesn’t speak to her after dinner, and when it’s bedtime and Ava pops into the doorway, there are no words. Sure, Robin pulls back the covers, but she does not greet her or smile, and they sleep facing opposite directions.

Still, Ava doesn’t know what happened. There isn’t a single reason she can think of for the sudden change, nor is there an idea she can think of to fix the metaphorical distance between them. As they sleep, Robin is right beside her, but she’s a million miles away.

And Ava dreams, not of Connor, but of Robin bleeding out in front of her.


	10. Chapter 10

For the next two days, Robin is distant. Something has changed, something devastating and life-changing, and Ava can’t figure out what it is. Every time she asks, she’s stonewalled. It isn’t fair, but life isn’t fair, and perhaps this is her mortal punishment for what she did back in Chicago. She doesn’t much believe in the idea of hell, but this- this is hell. Pure and simple. For the briefest of moments, she was allowed true affection from the strangest of sources, only to have it ripped away from her just as Connor was.

Her comfort becomes Angie. The nightmares don’t end, but Robin doesn’t comfort her the same way, so Ava sneaks out just before dawn to curl up in the wet grass with Angie’s warm body and kiss her dirty fur like she’s a teddy bear. Angie is like her. Past her prime, mostly useless, but still around. Still here. Just being a bit of a burden on everyone.

But on the third morning, when it’s the day of the market, Robin seems bright again as she loads up her truck and tends to the animals. She smiles, and she pulls Ava close in the soft bloom of the morning light as though everything is okay again. And her lips, sweet with balm, are tenderly soft on Ava’s on for the shortest of kisses. It means something more, though, and Ava is eager to move past the iciness that has burned between them out of nowhere.

“Come with me to the market,” Robin says, and means it. “It’ll be a good chance to meet the locals.”

And Ava almost says no, too afraid of being recognized. But she’s desperate for human connection and afraid of being abandoned again, so she says yes and climbs into the passenger seat like it’s the most natural thing in the world. 

Connor’s photo remains in the house, although he had become a frequent companion in Ava’s short not-quite isolation. She’s without him, but she’s with Robin, and what is there to be but happy as they drive in the blasting AC, the world open and outstretched before them. Robin almost speaks a couple of times, but she is quiet. And Ava mirrors it, for fear of what happens should she stop.

The market is busy but homely, vendors putting up their stalls and early visitors coming by to pick up their favorites. Usual customers, she realizes, because people already seem to know what they’re coming to purchase. It’s a ritual, a routine that Ava will be settling into, she decides as they begin setting up their tables. She can handle this. It’ll be like having her daily chores at the farm, and like the predictability that occasionally found its way into her old job. She knew her rounds and their timing, knew exactly how long each surgery should take. This will be part of her new life, and it will be with Robin right beside her.

Since everything is in cash, Robin leaves her in charge of the stall at the beginning so she can do her shopping at the others for things not produced on her own. Soap, honey, vegetables. Rounding out their life. It takes a while for the first customer to arrive, and she looks terribly confused to see Ava and not Robin standing here next to the brightly painted sign declaring Robin’s name and the prices of the loaves.

“Where’s Robin?” The woman asks, tilting her head to the side. She seems unsure. “Who’re you?”

Ava pastes on a false smile. “I’m the new farm hand. I’m helping while she does her shopping.”

The woman hums in disapproval. But nonetheless, she peruses the loaves until she finds one she likes, and points at it with a knobbly finger. Ava dutifully wraps it up, states the total ($5), and exchanges the bread for the money. Easy enough. Too easy for her, too easy for a woman who put herself through medical school and became a surgeon. A good one. She was good at surgery, and now she’s selling bread in a small town in the midwest, wearing muddy boots, and watching over the crowds for Robin’s familiar braid hanging down against her red tank top. Ava doesn't like this feeling of being completely alone but surrounded by people, trapped helplessly by leaves of bread with no real purpose anymore. There's the farm, but it's not the same. She didn't grow up wanting this, spending years preparing for it. 

She wants to go home, and thinking about it stings in a way it hasn’t since she left. Her nose burns and her eyes start to itch. Before she knows it, she’s crying. A quiet cry, a gentle spring rain, one she works through like her cheeks aren’t wet and her chest doesn’t hurt. But pretending doesn’t make it go away.

No one approaches her at all to buy bread until Robin comes back, her once empty reusable bags full to bursting with all manner of things. They drop. Thud on the concrete. Robin’s hands are now on Ava’s face, brushing away her tears and studying her closely like a puzzle she just can’t put together.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Ava shakes her head and shuts her eyes, melts into the caring touch Robin gives to her in a promise that things are going to turn out alright, one way or another. She’s safe here, even if it’s not necessarily where she wants to be.

With Robin back, they sell most of their inventory, and she doesn’t think about Connor for the rest of the day. She just thinks about the way the sun looks on Robin’s skin, the surety of Robin’s hands on her back, the infectiousness of Robin’s bright smile. The world becomes Robin, Robin, Robin, and Ava’s not angry about it. She clings to it. And she sees this version of herself, someone who can live like this happily and without pain, and she revels in it. She craves the Ava who sells bread at the farmer’s market and holds Robin’s hand.

It’s only back at home, half-drowning in the warmth, that her eyes return to her photo of Connor and she asks herself if he would ever live like this. She can’t imagine him milking the cows or tending the crops. In her mind, he exists only in the operating room and her bed, otherwise absent of depth. She can’t picture him grocery shopping. Doing laundry. Cleaning out her fridge. He’s not a person, he’s a photo. Two dimensional. Flat. She can easily imagine Robin doing each of those things, and something about the thought is warm and loving. A life. A home. Something real and worth nurturing.

She smooths her fingers over Connor’s faded face, younger without the beard he grew at the end of his life. He looks happy. She didn’t often see him so happy. And so she tucks his photo away and thinks about the mundanity of Robin folding blankets until it’s time to help cook dinner.


	11. Chapter 11

Over the course of a week, Ava thinks less about Connor and more about Robin. Robin is real, and she’s had this sudden revelation that her perception of Connor wasn’t. Not really. He wasn’t a person but an object, a feeling, a taste of what could have been and what never was. In all reality, Connor was an idea. But Robin is real and concrete, and feels like home when she opens her arms every night for Ava to sleep with her as opposed to in her own bed. There’s nothing else and no one else. The two of them are the only real people in the world, and it’s worth the boredom and homesickness that tears little pieces from her one after another.

But still, she thinks about Connor because she can’t stop. Every night, she sees him in her nightmares, and every day, she can’t help staring at his photo and remembering his hands on her. It felt like something, even if it didn’t give her what Robin’s soft touch does. She misses it, and the safety it brought with it, even as she comes to understand how much better this is than whatever she lived with before.

She cooks with Robin. They tend the farm. Life is good, but God, she aches more often than she doesn’t, and the homesickness comes and goes. But she breathes through it every time, as much as she possibly can.

Lying in bed, tired but alive, she busies herself tracing careful fingers up and down Robin’s arm. Goosebumps rise in her wake. She’s had them herself, but it’s different to see them on another person, to feel them, to know they’re because of her. Robin shivers. And Ava wants to see if she gets the same reaction with her lips, if it’s more intense, even. She’s nervous.

Life is better and worse here. She misses her old life, but there are parts of this new one that she lives for now. Surgery meant the world to her. Being a doctor was all that mattered to her. But now, she has Robin and the cows and the harsh overhead sun. She has the warm quilts draped around their bodies. She has something, at the very least, which she can pull the last dregs of life from in hopes of a fresh dose of serotonin in her brain to make her feel less like a zombie.

“I’m so glad I met you,” she says.

Robin hums and her fingers are gentle running through Ava’s hair. They’re close. They’re together. Ava wants to kiss her. She doesn’t. Instead she rests, reveling in the skin to skin touch and trying to recall a single moment she felt this content with Connor, with anyone. As far as she reaches, she can’t find anything. Not a single memory.

“Thank you for everything. For taking me in.”

She lifts her head from the pillow and suddenly Robin’s kissing her. Gentle. Her hand cradling Ava’s head, steadying her and making her feel held. For lack of a better term, she melts. Everything is Robin. Just Robin, real and concrete and not just Ava’s fragmented perception, but a human being. And it’s killing her slowly.

“I love you,” she says when Robin pulls away. 

The distance between them grows. They’re not touching anymore, and now Robin is staring at her like she’s grown another head. It aches, it burns, it hurts. She wants to sink into the earth and never exist again.

“We’ve known each other less than a month.”

“I know, but…”

But it doesn’t feel like less than a month. But Ava has never felt like this before. But there’s something real here worth clinging to. But. 

Robin draws her legs up to her chest, protective, like she’s afraid. And why would she be afraid? Ava would never hurt her, would never- would never-

She would never hurt Connor, either.

She looks at her own hands and hates them with the same ferocity she hates the emptiness enveloping her. Killing her. She should be dead on that floor, bleeding out and pale and lifeless like Connor became. He didn’t deserve that. It should have been her, and she shouldn’t be here, and she can’t fucking breathe but Robin is still staring at her.

“Ava, do you know what love is?”

“Yes,” she says. She reaches out, wants touch again, but Robin refuses. “I- Love is- I feel it, with you. It’s different than before, I love you.”

“Did you love Connor Rhodes?”

The words are a sword. Cold. Sharp. Piercing. Ava’s chest is closing in on itself. She’s collapsing. She’s dying. “I…”

“I recognized you on the news at my friend’s house. I called my dad.”

Ava is falling apart now. She thought she had something. She thought she deserved something. Now it’s too late, and she doesn’t know how much time she has before someone shows up to arrest her. Maybe gun her down. Put her out of her misery like a sick dog who’s had too many painful years already, although this would be out of hate rather than love.

“How much time do I have?”

But Robin reaches for her, slow and careful. “I wanted to know what he thought about you. I didn’t tell anyone you’re here.”

Her hand, warm, on Ava’s shoulder. 

“I don’t think you know enough about what love is to say that you love me. But I- Ava, I don’t think you’d hurt me.”

“How do you know?”

Her hand on Ava’s cheek now. Steady and safe. Gentle. 

“Would you?”

Ava shakes her head. “Never.”

Robin smiles, strokes the angle of her cheekbone. But then she pulls away and buries herself beneath the covers again. Empty, cold space between them. Ava won’t bother trying to fill it, and slips out of bed to return to her own. Her own which she has only slept in a couple of times, and feels oversized, empty, when she slips into it.

Of course, the isolation brings back the nightmares in full force. Connor’s body, empty of life, dying in front of her. That sound again. The choking again. His blood on her hands and her clothes. And now, Robin beside him, with accusation in her eyes as she chokes and coughs and wheezes. Both of them die. And it’s her fault, and although she drops to her knees to try giving Robin CPR, try helping her, it’s far too late. She’s alone. It’s her own fault. She did this to herself. To them.

She wakes up in a cold sweat. Early morning, just before the rise of the sun. And she knows, the way she always knew how to perform a surgery, she knows that her peace is over.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to those who came on this journey with me in a very self indulgent if a little short fic. ❤

It hurts, being alone again. Robin is so close but so far, leaving Ava to suffer on her own in the knowledge that her love is unwanted, unrecognized. She’s a monster. For now, she’s safe here, but she knows it won’t last long, and that she has no choice but to leave. What else is there for her, here? A bed she can’t lay in, a cow on death’s cusp. Nightmares that never go away. She may as well give up for good, get rid of herself and make the world a better place.

She’s crying, she realizes as she gets dressed. Real tears, heavy ones that soak into the collar of her flannel and make her skin cold. They’re not warm tears. Why would they be? There’s evidently nothing warm, nothing worthwhile about herself. All she does is hurt.

At least Nina is unafraid of her when she kneels to milk her that morning. She’s docile as ever, and Ava feels needed as she throws herself into her daily chores. From a distance, she watches Robin go about her tasks as well. It must mean something that she’s still here, hasn’t thrown Ava to the hounds. She wants to believe it means something.

And it does, because come evening, Robin has started to come around. They share dinner, and go to bed together, and it’s almost normal. Almost. There’s still the fact that Robin knows what she did, and that Ava is never going to be able to undo the past. For the rest of her life, she will have to live with what she did. There will be no escape.

Quiet dinner, quiet pain. And Angie outside, on her last days, and the calf headed out any day now. This is her life, and it will hurt the entire time, no matter what. It always will, she realizes, as Robin’s arm curls tight around her and holds her close. Closer than Connor liked to hold her. Closer than she has ever felt worthy of being held. This is a different life, a different world, and she wants it so badly but knows all too well that it’s not going to last.

For her, nothing good ever lasts. 

And she’s so frightened of what she’s learned she’s capable of. She killed two people. And she ran away, but that part of her still exists in the constant nightmares and the unending memory of the way Connor died in front of her. Some days she swears she can still smell the heavy copper.

That night, as the dreams get to her again, she makes her way outside rather than wake Robin up for help when she must know exactly what the nightmares are about. Outside is safer, warmer, free from Robin and Ava's worries about what their relationship means. No, it's just her and the cats and goats, roaming around mindlessly as she stays put.

Unlike in Chicago, the sky is buried in stars. They give real light to the sky, alongside the moon, without being blocked by streetlights and cars with LEDs on the front. Some of them move, making her realize that a good amount of the pinpricks in the sky are actually fireflies. They’re yellow. Warm. She holds out her hand, hoping one will land on her, but not a single one does because this isn’t a movie. 

It feels like a movie. Like it’s not real. People like her survive movies, never get in trouble, fall in love. All of those things are happening to her, even though she’s made countless mistakes, and so it doesn’t quite feel like she’s living anymore. Someone behind the curtains pulling strings. She’s a puppet.

The milky sky is a comfort to her, almost as much as Robin’s touch, and she doesn’t feel guilty for enjoying it the way she does when Robin holds her and kisses her cheek. This is something she’s allowed. Nature, the sky, is for everyone, even her. There was never something so beautiful and freeing in Chicago.

She holds tight to her soft memories of being loved, and they warm her as the night cools off properly. It’s much colder during the night than the days have been, especially outside in her thin pajamas. The animals are warm, but they stay clear of her, until she walks over to the pasture and finds her familiar spot laying in the grass next to Angie. Angie is warm. Comforting. Ava rests her head against her slowly moving flank and it’s comforting in a way little else can be.

She misses being inside, but this feels less invasive. There’s not as much guilt.

“I love her,” she tells Angie, and throws one arm over her side. “I love her. I know her well enough to love her.”

Angie doesn’t respond. She’s too busy sleeping and breathing loudly. It’s reassuring, really, as is the steady thud of her heart. She’s alive, she’s not going anywhere, and she doesn’t make Ava feel broken.

She stays there for a while, until Robin eventually comes to join her. Warm, wrapped in the quilt from the bedroom. She casts it over Ava’s body as well, so they can share the heat as Robin joins her in the grass, pulls her close and holds her. Kisses her temple with such soft lips. Makes her feel like she’s worth something, worth holding in the cold night air that’s dipped so far from sunshine temperatures. 

And through the night they stay there, until the hens cluck and Nina awakens, the sun just beginning to bloom over the horizon. The corn tinted gold, grass gleaming. Dew has settled on their skin and left them damp, but in a good way. Like the sky has kissed them too. Ava buries her face in the crook of Robin’s neck. It’s warm on her cold nose. She’s safe here, truly safe, and it’s such a foreign thought that she barely believes it.

“I love you,” she says again. “Please believe me. I love you.”

Robin doesn’t answer her, but doesn’t pull away, either. She’s still here kisses Ava again, gentle. Ava craves a real kiss, one she may never have again. Not since she let her faulty perceptions and her panic and her anger overwhelm her. After that, she doesn’t deserve real kisses. But she also doesn’t deserve Robin, and yet here the two of them are together in the field. Robin came out here because Ava was here. And maybe that means that she loves Ava. That there’s something real here worth putting time and effort into. She’d like to think so.

As the first pink and yellow rays of sunlight burn across the land, Ava begins to fall asleep. Just her, Angie, and Robin. She feels truly loved when she shuts her eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr @neworleansspecial


End file.
